One of the great pioneers of the Las Vegas Strip has died. Kirk Kerkorian died on Monday night in Los Angeles, after a short illness, aged 98. He was the largest shareholder in MGM Resorts International, a company he founded in 1991.
Kerkorian was a key figure in the development of Las Vegas as a major tourist destination. He built the International Hotel, currently the Westgate Las Vegas, in 1969, what is now Bally’s on The Strip but which he originally called the MGM Grand, in 1973 and the huge current MGM Grand in 1993.
He had multifarious business interests but his first love was the Las Vegas casino resorts and other tourist destinations in the city, including the CityCenter development that opened in 2009. Kerkorian played a key part in the initial concept of CityCenter, which cost $8.5bn.
Kerkorian was born in California in 1917 to a family of Armenian immigrants, who became homeless and, at the age of nine, he sold newspapers on a street corner. But he was to become one of the world’s richest men, listed in Forbes Magazine as number 393 among billionaires. In his life he was a prizefighter, installed furnaces, piloted warplanes across the Atlantic in World War II and was a skilled property developer.
It was this latter occupation that amassed his riches, especially buying up land in Las Vegas in the early 1960s. At one time he owned the Flamingo and also owned the land upon which Caesar’s Palace now stands. He was responsible for bringing big name entertainers into the city for his International Hotel, including Barbara Streisand and Elvis Presley. His first MGM Grand was the world’s largest hotel when it was built in 1973 with 2,084 rooms, but he sold it to the slots manufacturer, Bally, in 1986. He then bought the Desert Inn and the Sands, selling them on later. He built his new MGM Grand in 1993 with 5,000 bedrooms – once more the world’s largest.
He was married four times and leaves two daughters.
